The man with one horn looked angry. Maybe that was how his face always looked. She knew she should be afraid. Trembling, even, but she attributed her lack of fear to a lingering side effect of the stasis.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
The warlord tapped a spot just behind his right ear.
Oh. The translation chip. “I always thought the rumor about using the chip as a tracker was bullshit. Guess Nicky was right after all. You got a name?”
“Paax.”
Thalia wanted to tell Paax she had been told his name once but the fog in her head made her forget and that she had met his wife, who had been impossibly sweet. She didn’t know how such a kind woman fit with such a frowny, serious guy like him, but she was glad they had each other. What came out of her mouth, however, was, “I’m not going back. There’s nothing for me there, and the people who screwed me over are just going to do it again. Not to mention that I’m worried that the guy who bought me will come looking for me.”
“You are one of the rescued females?” Havik asked.
“I am not concerned with your travel plans. I delivered you to the Sangrin authorities, who were to make arrangements for you,” Paax said, ignoring Havik’s demand for more information. “I do, however, have a proposition for you.”
“I’m listening.” She kept her voice from wavering, not an easy task considering she had four massive aliens standing over her. One looked annoyed, the other kept a neutral expression, another had an amused smirk on his face, and Danger Bang just looked pissed. If what the warlord had to say resembled getting her on an Earth-bound ship, she’d run. Somehow. They probably weren’t going to stuff her in another stasis chamber, which meant she had some time to figure it out.
“Help us capture those who took you,” Paax said.
Her shoulders slumped. “I already told you everything I know. I didn’t see or hear anything.” The medics said that her stasis chamber ran uninterrupted for three years. The smugglers didn’t wake her up for tea parties and divulging nefarious schemes.
The warlord sank to his knees, sitting on his heels. Havik gasped.
The serious one, Seeran, tossed a critical glare at Havik. “As bait,” he said.
“Bait?”
“Unacceptable,” Havik interrupted. “To endanger a female, even one—”
Paax held up a hand, silencing Havik. “It is a dangerous proposition to bring them to justice but not without reward.”
“Justice like law and order justice, or justice like stabby-stabby bang-bang?” She made finger pistols and pew-pew sound effects. She would never have dared to be so flippant with Nicky, for fear of what he might do, but the worst had already happened to her. It was freeing, even if it made her reckless. “Honestly, I’m fine either way, but I’d like to know.”
“Law and order, if possible. If you do this, I will compensate you with an amount of credits that will enable you to go anywhere. My mate called it ‘fuck you money.’”
“I like the sound of that.” With enough money, she could go to school, get certified, and be a nurse for real, or even go back to Earth and take a contract out on Nicky. For a moment, the thought of ending Nicky’s life filled her with a dark joy, but she wasn’t a killer. A thief, yes, but she did what she had to do to survive. She couldn’t kill unless her life depended on it. “What’s the catch?”
“Let us discuss this in a private location,” the warlord said, rising to his feet.
Havik
The warlord kneeled, placing himself below all four individuals present. Havik had never seen such a thing. To purposely let himself be placed in a vulnerable position would be to invite a challenge. Havik’s father would never allow any display of weakness, from himself or his son.
Paax led them to a private meeting room above the plaza. With every step, Havik’s questions about the warlord increased. He had heard the rumors about Paax. They were impossible to avoid. He had been a scientist and poisoned his warlord, then plotted with a scheming assassin to upset the warlord. How else could a scientist defeat a distinguished and skilled warrior? The Council mistrusted Paax, who had a record of ignoring orders.
Surely Havik and Ren could find a more suitable warlord to serve.
“Sir, I must protest the involvement of a civilian,” Havik said.
“What’s wrong with me?” the female demanded, planting a hand on her hip.
“You’re a common thief,” he said. “I observed this female steal credits from passing civilians in the crowd.”
“And no one noticed?” the warlord asked, sounding disappointingly intrigued.
Havik’s shoulders slumped. The law meant something. Order meant something. If this warlord so readily overlooked the foundation of honorable behavior, then this clan held no future for himself or Ren. They would complete their mission and continue their search.
“You noticed because I’m rusty as hell,” Thalia said. She perched on the edge of the conference table; her feet dangling off the ground. “But it doesn’t matter. I donated the credit.”
“Why?” he demanded, stepping forward. This close, he could detect the odor of cooking herbs and mint clinging to her person. She smelled palatable, not appetizing. Her scent did not make his mouth water.
“Because this big red dude was chasing me. By the way, you’re not subtle. You might as well have been flashing a neon sign over your head.” Her eyes rolled. “There was a kid inside the shop selling candy as a fundraiser, which, I have to tell you, is weird to see in space. You’d think that an interstellar society would fund their schools better, but at least I got this.” She fished out a foil-wrapped square from a pocket. Unwrapped, the confection released a wave of sugar and chemical dyes. “I think it’s taffy. Want a piece?”
“I will not partake of your criminal deeds,” Havik spat.
“My standards are flexible, and I like candy. I’m Ren, since someone has no manners. Pleasure to meet you.” Ren stuck out a hand in a Terran greeting.
“Thalia.” She broke off a piece for Ren, the traitor, and one for herself. “Fizzy,” she said, chewing the piece of ill-gotten confection. “So, you have a job for me as human bait?”
The warlord ignored the female’s insolence. He ran a hand along his damaged horn and even seemed amused.
Havik did not know how to process this information.
“Seeran, if you will,” the warlord said.
“Yes. The big red one,” the other male said, stepping forward, “has come to track those who took you. He is, as you observed, not subtle.”
“I get results,” Havik said.
The warlord’s attention snapped toward him, all his mirth and good humor gone. “Yes. I have been told about your results, specifically ones that involve my engineer and endangering his mate.”
“I spotted a target of interest. I asked the engineer to assist me by following the target, because they would recognize me from a previous encounter,” Havik said. He neglected to mention that the original target had been Vanessa, who he followed from the Sangrin station down to the planet’s surface. Then he spotted a known associate of a smuggler.
“And when you were captured and the female endangered?”
Something inside Havik snapped. “She was my mate first! The engineer was too eager to please her, to show me up, that he became distracted and she was taken.”
The room fell silent.
“You did what?” Ren asked.
“You’re married?” Thalia asked.
Their questions came like a sudden flood of spring rain. Havik ignored them. Paax patiently waited for their noise to cease.
“Tell me what you learned,” Paax said to Havik.
“The crew is Sangrin, the ones that I recognized, but the captain of the vessel is Terran. I was able to observe the serial numbers on the vessel, so we can track it.” Havik closed his eyes, remembering the vessel and the warehouse. “The paint appeared to be smudged around the numbers.”
“They alter the seria
l numbers,” Ren added, excitement creeping into his voice. “That’s helpful. A few strokes can alter a number but too much fresh paint will call attention to the alteration. If you can recall the numbers, I can run a simulation and predict the alterations.”
“I also have a witness, a Terran male. He was injured and is currently in the hospital on the planet’s surface.”
“Is this witness a smuggler, too?” Paax asked.
“I am unable to say. He was held captive. My mate—Jaxar’s mate—negotiated for his release.”
“Was this male destined for the auction block?”
“He had debts and had been injured as retribution. I cannot think there is much business in damaging a commodity.”
Paax absently went to stroke the severed horn, then jerked his hand away, as if in pain.
Fascinating.
Havik averted his eyes because he did not wish for the warlord to catch him gawking. If the horn pained him, why not cover it with a sheath?
“You want to know why I don’t cover my horn? Do not deny it,” the warlord said.
Stunned, Havik wondered if Paax could sense his thoughts. Was the warlord a foundling, a stolen child by the Suhlik and subjected to experiments? They had a legend on Rolusdreus, about a foundling who made his way back to his clan. He had been altered to carry a plague. Any who welcomed him soon grew ill. Never growing ill, the foundling wandered from settlement to settlement, searching for a home.
Only a cautionary tale and not historical fact, Havik still felt unnerved. He glanced at Ren, who stood at attention with his eyes forward but otherwise at ease. Very well. Havik copied the stance. “I apologize. It is not my place to question you.”
Paax waved a hand, indicating that they could relax. “I lost my horn in the challenge that made me warlord. It was a good blow. While the nerves in the inner core are exposed, I will not dishonor the male who took my horn.”
The warlord admitted to a weakness. Havik did not know how to process that information. “My apologies for staring. My former warlord never tolerated questions.”
“Garu Kaos never tolerated anything short of worshipful praise. I’m amazed the male can move at all, considering the weight of his ego,” Paax said. “Besides, the entire clan witnessed the fight. To cover my horn would be vanity.”
“Kaos is more concerned with the appearance of strength than practicing it,” Ren said. Havik nudged his friend’s boot with his foot. “What? Are we pretending that it’s a secret why we left?”
“I am not here to gossip about my previous warlord. I do not gossip.” Havik hoped Paax understood that whatever he saw in the warlord’s clan, he would keep confidential.
The warlord shared a look with Seeran and the male moved as if prompted by an unspoken command. He withdrew a tablet from a pocket. The device unfolded on the table and the screen glowed. “You were sent here because a week ago, our clan received a distress signal from a cargo vessel. When we arrived, the cargo vessel was under attack from a marauder.”
“Space pirates, no shit?” Thalia asked.
Seeran flicked his fingers across the screen and a tablet projected a holographic video of two ships. One ship, ragged in appearance, fired upon the other. Without warning, the cargo vessel glowed internally, then exploded.
“That makes no sense. The cargo vessel did not suffer the kind of damage to cause such an explosion,” Ren said.
“Sabotage,” Seeran said. “The cargo vessel smuggled sentient beings. The distress call was manufactured to keep the true nature of the ship’s cargo from the crew. The marauder intercept was arranged. Our presence there was by chance and unfortunate for the smugglers.”
The female leaned forward; her gaze fixed on the looping video.
The warlord spoke, “We seized the marauders’ vessel and discovered several stasis chambers. Despite the data systems being dumped, we were able to recover a communication log, the cargo vessel’s manifest, and a record of the most recent ports of call. I believe you can pursue this information faster than I and without the Council’s constant demands—”
“Which ship was I on?”
The female’s question interrupted the warlord’s debriefing.
“Pardon?” Paax asked.
“The cargo vessel or the pirate ship? That footage is my rescue, right? Me and the other women. Who had me? Where did you find me?” Her hand curled into a loose fist, pressed against the base of her throat.
The warlord’s expression softened. “We recovered your pod from the debris of the cargo vessel.”
She paled. What precious little color she had drained away alarmingly fast. “I was adrift? Like, in space? Is that why,” she wiggled her fingers at her head, “I have brain fog? Those fuckers gave me brain damage. I mean, I knew they did, but I didn’t think I was floating in space with all the blown-up garbage. How did you even find me?”
Havik acted on instinct. He took her hand in his and stroked the back with his thumb. Her breath fluttered in her chest, on the verge of panic, but her heart remained steady.
Her hand squeezed his. This pleased Havik more than he could explain.
“Your stasis unit was undamaged and had its own power supply. The brain fog,” Paax said, in a reassuring tone, “is due to the prolonged exposure to the stasis chamber, not a power malfunction.”
“Were there other pods?”
The warlord looked to Seeran for the answer. “Yes,” Seeran said slowly, as if weighing his answer. “Four in total. Yours was the only functioning recovered pod.”
Her shoulders slumped but she never let go of his hand. “You figured out where those assholes were going?” she asked.
“We have their destination. It is a station near the edge of the Sangrin system,” Paax said.
“And you want me to be bait. I’m just going to wander around this station and hope I get kidnapped? That is such a bad plan. How are you going to track me? Let me be a plant and go undercover. I’ll gather the good intel.”
Havik shared a look with Ren, as his friend had studied Terran culture. Surely this was a translator error. “Vegetation?”
“Remember, your translation chip has tracking capabilities,” the warlord said. He tapped a spot just behind his ear to demonstrate.
The female mirrored the action. “The smugglers won’t detect it?”
“No. It is Mahdfel technology, and that function is not shared with civilians.” The warlord pushed the tablet toward Havik. “You have the information. Devise a suitable plan. Bring back actionable information. Earn your place in my clan.”
Chapter 8
Thalia
Aliens were dumb. At least, these aliens were dumb.
Okay, that was harsh, but if they thought she could just wander into a hive of villainy to get kidnapped by smugglers without looking like a complete trap, they were out of their extraterrestrial minds. Even if it worked, she’d be shoved back in a freezer for who knows how long, which couldn’t be good for her brain.
Havik walked too fast. She hustled behind him, trying to keep up but his long legs had a significant advantage over her shorter ones. The crowd parted around him, so that was one advantage of following a big grumpy alien and she’d call the view of his muscular ass the second advantage. The Mahdfel might be genetically engineered super soldiers with a superiority complex and a tactless way of talking down to lesser beings, but there was nothing wrong with the packaging.
“So, you arrested someone today? A target of interest,” she said, pitching her voice low to mimic Havik’s dry delivery.
He ignored her. That would not do.
“Do you have a plan? Or are you going with the chum-in-the-water approach? I mean, that might work, and I am rather chummy. It’s a byproduct of my sparkling personality. Get it? Chummy.”
His fingers flexed. Okay, it wasn’t the greatest joke in the universe, but she was aiming more for annoyance than gut-busting, knee-slapping humor.
“Come on. That’s a little funny,” she said.
The other man, the one who introduced himself as Ren, slowed his pace to walk beside her. “I found it amusing.”
Havik turned abruptly on his heel. “Do not speak to her,” he said, jabbing a finger into Ren’s chest. His bottom teeth, the tusks that jutted upward, were a stark white against the deep brick red of his skin. Irritation made his eyes darken, and Thalia very much never wanted to be on the receiving end of that glare.
Ren grinned up at Havik, his lock of white hair a slash across his face. “And why is that?”
“She is a thief and a liar.”
“Nothing more?”
Havik huffed, then spun away. The crowd scattered.
“I really hope his plan isn’t to toss me into a pit of pirates and hope one of them carries me off to their secret lair,” she muttered.
“Are you a thief?”
“Definitely, but only for survival reasons. No fun. Only profit.”
“And a liar?”
She dug her hands into the hoodie’s pockets. “It doesn’t matter what I say. You won’t believe me.”
“Come along. He is upset enough to leave port without us,” Ren said.
They pushed through the crowds and took a ramp down to the lower levels, to the actual docks.
Shiny examples of high-end personal transport mixed with the plain but functional aesthetic of cargo vessels. Thalia had never even been on a ship or off-planet—until recently, obviously—but she had been to the dockyards plenty of times. Nicky did most of his business in the backrooms of bars and warehouses.
Havik thumped his way up the ramp attached to a distressed matte black ship. Flecks of paint clung to the rivets and seams but otherwise it looked as if the paint had been scoured away. Divots caused by who-knows-what pitted the surface of the hull. Gravel? How did a spaceship get sprayed with gravel?
The ship appeared painfully flimsy. Thalia had lived with plenty of store-brand goods and hand-me-downs that were third-rate, or worse. She grew up with bargain shampoo, no-name shoes, and food perilously close to the expiration date. A sketchy ship that looked like it’d fall apart if it got wet was where she drew the line.
Havik: Warlord Brides (Warriors of Sangrin Book 9) Page 8